The latest from H-SHEAR...

Heike, I've often used the preface to the second edition of Sylvester Graham's A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity. It provides some good material on why Graham thinks this is an issue of great concern as well a

Piggybacking on the discussion about antebellum reformism, I'd like to ask for suggestions for undergraduate-appropriate secondary works on social movements in the nineteenth century. I'm particulalry interested in books or articles that address strategy and organization. I'm also looking for good treatments of illiberal movements such as temperance and nativism.

I always try to expand students' understanding of reform by including causes and movements that do not strike them as progressive or even humane, but nonetheless shed light on the ideological themes that connected and underlay antebellum reform activities -- so for example anti-masturbation campaigns and even anti-Catholicism. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz's Bedford volume on Attitudes Toward Sex in Antebellum America teaches well in this regard.

I've used Joshua Rothman's Reforming America, 1815-1860: A Norton Documents Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010) with good results in an upper level course on antebellum America. His intros are easy to understand and it's a nice overview of the various reform movements in the US during the antebellum period.